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Incorporating dead material in ecosystem assessments and projections

Nature Climate Change (2022)Cite this article

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When considering how ecosystems will react to climate change the importance of dead matter has been largely overlooked. Here we discuss why dead material is integral to ecosystem form and function, and why its persistence or degradation must be explicitly included in models considering ecosystem futures in a rapidly changing world.

Dead material plays a number of crucial roles in supporting ecosystem functions in terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments, from habitat formation to carbon storage. Dead organic matter is a key component, including dead leaf and root litter in all terrestrial ecosystems, standing and fallen dead wood in forests, dead vegetative matter preserved for thousands of years in peatlands, and dead animal remains in freshwater systems1,2,3. In marine environments, shellbeds in oyster reefs and exposed dead skeletal frameworks in cold-water coral (CWC) reefs form the basis for their ecosystems, and marine detritus is both a habitat and a source of nutrients for additional marine life4,5,6.

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Fig. 1: Concept image of varied impacts of different climate stressors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Kelsey Archer Barnhill, J. Murray Roberts, Isla Myers-Smith, Mathew Williams, Kyle G. Dexter, Casey Ryan & Sebastian J. Hennige

  2. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Kyle G. Dexter

  3. School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Institute of Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering, Heriot–Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    Uwe Wolfram

Authors
  1. Kelsey Archer Barnhill
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  2. J. Murray Roberts
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  5. Kyle G. Dexter
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  7. Uwe Wolfram
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  8. Sebastian J. Hennige
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Contributions

All authors contributed to manuscript conceptualization. K.A.B. led initial draft and figure preparation, and all authors contributed to manuscript writing, editing and reviewing. U.W. and S.H. contributed equally.

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Correspondence to Sebastian J. Hennige.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Barnhill, K.A., Roberts, J.M., Myers-Smith, I. et al. Incorporating dead material in ecosystem assessments and projections. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01565-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01565-5

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